Twitter Locks Kids Out of Its Vine Video App

Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

Twitter now requires people to certify they are at least 17 years old before running the Apple version of the company’s video app Vine. Twitter says the iOS app is for adults because it contains ”frequent/intense sexual content or nudity,” among other things, signaling that Vine will continue to traffic in risqué content.

People flipped out last week when a Twitter staffer accidentally selected a pornographic Vine video as an “Editor’s Pick,” thus recommending it to all the service’s users. Twitter apologized for the mistake, but that doesn’t mean that adult content was banished from Vine. Indeed, there is nothing in Vine’s Terms of Service that prohibits sexually explicit videos. Vine even includes a mechanism that hides videos marked as inappropriate, requiring a second click to view them.

Apple reportedly pushed Twitter to put the age restriction in place, presumably because Vine can hypothetically be used to view porn, even though it’s not expressly designed for such content. The iOS version of Google’s Chrome web browser, which can (conceivably!) also be used to view porn, is similarly restricted to adults only, as are other iOS web browsers. Of course, like an “R” rating on a movie, a 17+ restriction on an app does not dampen its appeal to teenagers. This move could actually make Vine more common in high schools rather than less, if, that is, Twitter can convince teens to take any time away from SnapChat.